


I’m Alright (It Only Hurts When I Breathe)

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: She ends up in Baltimore. Some days she can't remember how.





	I’m Alright (It Only Hurts When I Breathe)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mammothluv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammothluv/gifts).



> _She ends up in Baltimore. Some days she can't remember how._

  
__

_My window through which nothing hides_   
_and everything sees_   
_I'm counting the signs and cursing the miles in between_

She ends up in Baltimore. Some days she can't remember how.

Everyday she can't remember why. Though it's the other side of the country to everything she's running from and so that's probably reason enough right there.

The free clinic she stumbled upon and eventually set up shop in is challenging in ways that Seattle Grace never was. But at the same time she finds her days blending together at the seams, unable to differentiate one from the next.

She’s tried dating.

Well, she’s tried eating food whilst seated across a restaurant table from a member of the opposite sex.

She’s even enjoyed it. On occasion.

But the clinic chews through her energy levels with a vigour that she thought she’d left behind all those years ago in Seattle. Left etched into the starched fabric of a hospital gown as unpronounceable chemicals dripped steadily into her blood stream in the name of saving her life. It’s all consuming and she’s failed to find a single nine to fiver who’s understood.

Or at least been willing to try.

And the thought of dating another doctor is still too much to bear.

Her apartment is nice. She likes it. Likes the view of the harbour from her kitchen window. Likes the hardwood floors and the four poster bed she convinced the delivery men to wrangle up the stairs and into her room. Turns out she hadn’t lost as much of her charm as she’d thought.

And she’s never been above using her assets to her advantage.

So yeah, she likes her apartment. But she doesn’t love it and it sure as hell doesn’t feel like home.

Or like any approximation of home that she’s ever experienced in the past.

And she's had more than just a few examples on which to base her comparisons.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

She barely thinks about before.

Not anymore.

She can go whole hours, days, weeks before she realises with a jolt that it's been six months, nine months, a year, two... And even then it's only been a cursory thought. A fleeting _'I wonder what...'_ that she pushes back down to her toes before it can form any more fully than that.

But she's noticed lately that it's getting harder. The thoughts are no more frequent. They're just a little more persistent when they do arrive. Eat away at her resolve a little more fully. Don't allow her to shove them away quite as completely.

It's perplexing to say the least.

Her workmates don't seem to notice. They all have their own issues. Their own shadows to hide in. Their own murky closets full of not so dusty skeletons.

You don't end up, a once respected psychiatrist, a published neurologist, a talk show paediatrician, a resident surgeon, working for barely enough to cover the rent in a free clinic in Baltimore unless life has handed you some pretty sketchy cards.

Maybe you even dealt them to yourself.

Most of the time they keep to themselves. Share only their most surface details and never ask questions they wouldn't be happy to answer themselves.

They tried doing social drinks one night. At a bar half a block from the clinic. She ordered a diet coke and left lipstick stains on the chipped rim of the glass. She's not entirely convinced they even noticed when she slipped out half an hour into the evening.

No one mentioned it the next day and no one attempted to organise a repeat occasion.

And it's probably better that way.

The only thing they seem to have in common is the fact that none of them ever intended to stay put.

But it's years later now and it seems that no one is going anywhere.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

On the fifth anniversary of the day she got the all clear she feels strangely light. Like the parts of her that have carried the fear and the trepidation and the constant wondering have emptied suddenly. Replaced with helium or nitrogen or maybe even nothing at all.

Maybe even hope.

She has to work. Which is nothing new because she always has to work. But it's even harder to concentrate on chest infections and pregnant fifteen year olds and the drunk and disorderly when her mind is almost three thousand miles to the west of where she currently is.

At lunch she buys a plane ticket on a whim. Charges it to her credit card and doesn't even bother to pack a bag.

She doubts she'll be gone long.

But she needs to go now or she never will.

Needs to go before she thinks about it too hard or she'll turn back before she even gets to the airport. Needs to go before she considers all the possible consequences and tears her ticket into a million tiny pieces, rolls her car window down an inch and releases them into the rushing breeze.

Needs to go before the freshly emptied parts of her fill again. With loneliness and ache. And the memories of people that mean almost nothing.

At least, not in the scheme of all the other people that have made up her life.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Hours later, as the wheels touch down, the suffocating dread she's been expecting doesn't eventuate. The emptied cavities in her chest remain blissfully clear and carefree. And the constant rain and the never ending grey are both surprisingly comforting.

Unlike Baltimore, Seattle feels a lot like coming home.


End file.
